4 ms·

I think you didn't get the bigger picture. Its not for streaming a movie is for everything on the web. Why would you pay 50 for Netflix if you can just consume

by noxer 5y ago

I think you didn't get the bigger picture. Its not for streaming a movie is for everything on the web. Why would you pay 50 for Netflix if you can just consume content wherever you want for 50 bucks instead. They can still offer you a flat rate if they want. The option to pay what you use doesn't take the option to pay upfront or whatever away. There is no doubt they will lure you into using the same service somehow but that's kind irrelevant. The goal is to have the choice and that you can pay/support the small fishes too. The one you would never make a subscription for. Same with donation. You probably dont have Wikipedia or hacker news subscription. But leaving a few cents for free content ever month would probably be a good idea to keep it free. Its not "all you can eat" is "you can eat where you want" you never missed that because it was always like that you never needed a subscription for certain food or restaurant chains. You just go and eat wherever you want and they all expect you to pay what you ordered or whatever deal they offer. This system makes it far more likely you go eat somewhere new and far more likely that you eat spaghetti where you like it the most and pizza somewhere ease. Web content should work the same.

zaphar 5y ago
This conversation is odd. Someone says there are no real world use cases. Someone else says yes there is and poses one. Former person points out that in fact that example just makes their point for them. The counter is well there has to be some use case because there are theoretically an infinite number of them. We just have to find one from that set. This example right here. It presumes that content creators will happily just bypass distributors like Netflix. I find that unlikely because it ignores what Netflix actually provides for content creators. 1. Funding in some cases. 2. Discovery and a ready audience. 3. Availability of content to your audience. Content creators have little motivation to not use Netflix or Disney+ or whatever other service. Those services have little motivation to use crypto streaming payments. And frankly most consumers don't care enough to create an incentive for the creators by voting with their wallet.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Sorry for the confusion what I meant was this is achievable today, but instead people opt to avoid micropayments and instead want to watch ads + get the content free, or pay for an all you can eat model. Everyone’s thought about micropayments. For decades. They’ve tried it many times. There’s no technological reason today that micropayments couldn’t be adopted overnight. They reason they aren’t is because people don’t want them. There’s a mass grave of micropayments startups, and I bet you anything it’s not because they couldn’t figure out how to debit and credit fractions of a unit. People don’t want to continuously make judgements about whether they’re getting good value for money in their content - especially their entertainment content.
  - noxer 5y ago
    >People don’t want to continuously make judgements about whether they’re getting good value for money in their content - especially their entertainment content. Why dont you look into the things we talked about here? See coil.com its a flat-rate system you are never bothered to decided if what you see is "worth the money" you just see that it streams money and you know its roughly halve a cent per minute. If the content sucks you leave because obviously you want the money to go to something you like. But that's already the default behavior anyway.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      I did look into it, I've seen these ideas before, and no, nobody wants to have an app or service than can just arbitrarily withdraw money from them haha. This is the problem you've danced around a few times. Content producers do not price their content by the byte or by the minute. They charge premium prices for premium content. And they charge low rates for low-end content. The flat-rate per-unit-data billing model falls down as soon as content providers set their own rates (and they will demand to). Then not only is there a ton of perverse incentive (like content providers just setting the max rate all the time since they know you're not making a purchasing decision) but it also feels crap to know you have no (a) idea and (b) control over how much you're getting billed. The only model that I can see working is a Netflix type model where you bill folks a fixed monthly fee, and you hand out the money to content producers based on agreements you negotiate. You aggregate the risk, you negotiate the pricing, you intermediate the customers and the content producers. You bill once a month, a fixed, predictable amount. No blockchain needed, just a Stripe account. I'm uniquely qualified to answer this, I worked at a startup that considered building literally this 5 years ago. The payment mechanics were never the issue. The fundamental billing model and customer interaction dynamics were at issue. Nobody wanted it haha, according to our user research. Nothing has fundamentally changed by stapling the blockchain to it. We actually got pretty far along building it - and had a bunch of high profile content producer relationships, you're welcome to reach out if you want to take the learnings. You seem involved in the project.
- noxer 5y ago
  You also miss the whole point. The Netflix example isn't something anyone tires to do now and it may never happen its just to show what the tech COULD do. Today web monetization and micropayment ideas are targeted at replacing ads. Ads are already micropayments.

by noxer 5y ago

zaphar 5y ago

This conversation is odd. Someone says there are no real world use cases. Someone else says yes there is and poses one. Former person points out that in fact that example just makes their point for them. The counter is well there has to be some use case because there are theoretically an infinite number of them. We just have to find one from that set. This example right here. It presumes that content creators will happily just bypass distributors like Netflix. I find that unlikely because it ignores what Netflix actually provides for content creators. 1. Funding in some cases. 2. Discovery and a ready audience. 3. Availability of content to your audience. Content creators have little motivation to not use Netflix or Disney+ or whatever other service. Those services have little motivation to use crypto streaming payments. And frankly most consumers don't care enough to create an incentive for the creators by voting with their wallet.

arcticbull 5y ago
Sorry for the confusion what I meant was this is achievable today, but instead people opt to avoid micropayments and instead want to watch ads + get the content free, or pay for an all you can eat model. Everyone’s thought about micropayments. For decades. They’ve tried it many times. There’s no technological reason today that micropayments couldn’t be adopted overnight. They reason they aren’t is because people don’t want them. There’s a mass grave of micropayments startups, and I bet you anything it’s not because they couldn’t figure out how to debit and credit fractions of a unit. People don’t want to continuously make judgements about whether they’re getting good value for money in their content - especially their entertainment content.
- noxer 5y ago
  >People don’t want to continuously make judgements about whether they’re getting good value for money in their content - especially their entertainment content. Why dont you look into the things we talked about here? See coil.com its a flat-rate system you are never bothered to decided if what you see is "worth the money" you just see that it streams money and you know its roughly halve a cent per minute. If the content sucks you leave because obviously you want the money to go to something you like. But that's already the default behavior anyway.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    I did look into it, I've seen these ideas before, and no, nobody wants to have an app or service than can just arbitrarily withdraw money from them haha. This is the problem you've danced around a few times. Content producers do not price their content by the byte or by the minute. They charge premium prices for premium content. And they charge low rates for low-end content. The flat-rate per-unit-data billing model falls down as soon as content providers set their own rates (and they will demand to). Then not only is there a ton of perverse incentive (like content providers just setting the max rate all the time since they know you're not making a purchasing decision) but it also feels crap to know you have no (a) idea and (b) control over how much you're getting billed. The only model that I can see working is a Netflix type model where you bill folks a fixed monthly fee, and you hand out the money to content producers based on agreements you negotiate. You aggregate the risk, you negotiate the pricing, you intermediate the customers and the content producers. You bill once a month, a fixed, predictable amount. No blockchain needed, just a Stripe account. I'm uniquely qualified to answer this, I worked at a startup that considered building literally this 5 years ago. The payment mechanics were never the issue. The fundamental billing model and customer interaction dynamics were at issue. Nobody wanted it haha, according to our user research. Nothing has fundamentally changed by stapling the blockchain to it. We actually got pretty far along building it - and had a bunch of high profile content producer relationships, you're welcome to reach out if you want to take the learnings. You seem involved in the project.
noxer 5y ago
You also miss the whole point. The Netflix example isn't something anyone tires to do now and it may never happen its just to show what the tech COULD do. Today web monetization and micropayment ideas are targeted at replacing ads. Ads are already micropayments.